In January 2003 the first human clone will be born, says the Italian scientist Severino Antinori (57). The woman's pregnancy is in its 33th week.

The clone will be male and weights 2.7 Kilogramm at the moment. It has a "more than a 90 per cent chance" of being born. Two other woman are also pregnant with human clones, according to Severino Antinori.

Well I think it is an area we are not currently ready for. I mean we can completly answer where we came from, now we are about to mass produce more of us. There are also moral question that I would want answered. Dose a clone have the same human rights as you and I?

I mean what is to stop someone from cloning their own batch of slaves? Little genetic altering and they are mindless followers... Add to that imagine life for these clones to be borm. Poked and proded their whole life. Yet they have human feelings and dreams same as you and I. Their whole life will be an lab test.

If something gose wrong that is very crule. I find the whole thing dissgusting and very morbid. The fact this is being done is scary. What is to stop a stalker from cloning his prey? Or imagine some wacko with money clones Hitler, or Christ. Scary I tell you.

it is immoral. devalues life itself, as if we haven't done enough of that. also, I think there rights will be violated. I know we banned human cloning, but that is to save face. we are doing it. why, i believe for war purposed. this is a hitlerish idea in itself. I don't believe we are close to mass cloning, but I believe it to be a very slippery slope.

also, the next large war is going to be over food or bush's greed. but eventually food, b/c we are growing at too large of a rate. i mean look what it has come to in china. it will be that way everywhere, so the last thing we need is for creation of more ppl in an unnatural way.

of course, I am against fertility pills also, i believe those ppl cannot reproduce for a reason, and then they take pills and are having 3+ kids.

i also, and i know this sounds crazy, but think that clones would be a different "race" and we do not understand enough about the creation of life and/or the technology we are developing as such rapid pace. that combined with our current devolution, will mean the human race itself will probably be knocked off the top of food chain if we don't watch it.

From what I have read and seen on this, most likely spoon fed propoganda LOL, they want to say it's immoral and bad and would be taken advantage of but... it would be so great for the human population as a whole.

If it provided technology to take a sample of my DNA and then grow a heart for me if I needed one, then I would support it. I would guess the rejection issue would be less since it actually was "original equipment", among other things that are beyond my education.

If it was the issue of cloning myself and carrying a fetus to term and then cutting out the heart and giving it to me... in my opinion, that is murder. To me it would be the same as taking an organ from one of my kids and letting them die so I could live. Or, on a broader scale, taking a compatable organ from anyone else that is alive. (I am personally for organ donation from the saving a life standpoint but not the people who make a bunch of money off of it).

There are many things that on the periphery of the main issue that have equal to or greater impact such as "if we modify the DNA so a brain never develops, it is simply a grown organ" which I also believe is murder. Our current law states the willing act of taking a life by act or omission is murder (not the letter of course... loosely quoted). Acting to modify DNA so they are born brain dead is just as much murder shooting someone in the head with a .44 to cause brain death.

I'm all for science and have nothing against cloning (and DNA modifying) if you are increasing food supplies by making a better cow or oranger oranges... I just don't think we as a race can handle the responsibility of playing God to that extent... or maybe playing God at all now that I think about it.

For one, we're a curious race, we'll take anything said and have to test it, for instance Anthrax lol...

Clones would be humans, the first ones at least, theid be everything of you and I, same feelings, same needs.

Think of it like this though, they take a DNA strand from both couples of a marrage which neither can have children, they cut half the DNA from one with half from another, its a baby, its the same as a sperm and an egg in essance, would it have a soul though isn't my problem .

I believe that taking an organ from someone who needs it to survive is murder, hell I think abortion is murder, but thats just me.

Science is a series of testing, thats all they really do, every so often their right. Eventually theil work on fruit and shit, which they have, but they went the human path to prove we could do it, when we fuck it up hopefully it'll stop, all else fails, try try again.

makes a bit more sense to me to start on the plants and work your way up to the most highly developed organisim...they could definitley do a lot of good with cloning though, like take nerve cells for example they never divide that is why if they become damaged you have paralisis but if you just cloned some new ones you'd be able to move again. and all you have to do is clone individual cells but i see no reason to want to clone a human no good could come of it that old saying my bio teacher used to tell us "if there is even the slightest possibility that something can go wrong it will" As far as food shortages go, what about space...i mean where the hell are we gonna put these people should a new race of clones develope, eh we were about due to colonize Mars anyway right?

_________________________
Just because I dont care doesn't mean that I don't understand.-Homer Simpson

"if we modify the DNA so a brain never develops, it is simply a grown organ"

This I found to be an interesting quote. Here's my take on things. First I want to emphasis that I also believe abortion is murder, so don't think I have no respect for a human life - cloned or otherwise.

Let's start small. It is ok to regrow tissue right? Say a doctor was able to give us a pill and we suddenly regrow a finger that has been cut off. Morally sound yes? No problem.

Ok, let's try a little bigger. We still have a cut off finger, and a doctor was able to take a piece of our tissue, DNA whatever they required - and grow a new finger for us. Then they reattach it and all is good no? Yeah, no different from before. Just regrowing some tissue.

Ok, so maybe we lost a bit more of our body than a finger. He lost our legs to a big burly axe-man who watched a few too many horror movies. It would be nice if the doctor could give us a pill again, but no, instead they are able to regrow our legs in a test tube. They made sure to manipulate the genetic material so that only the lower torso was grown - nothing above the waist. Then they reattach my legs. Just a bit of ole tissue reconstruction right? Aaaaaaah, people are starting to object.

Without a brain people, a body has no soul. It has no concept of right or wrong or thought or feeling - it is just a big living carbonic mass. That pair of legs don't deserve rights. They don't care - it's just legs. No more do our new finger in a glass deserve human rights. I wouldn't call it cloning. To clone somebody is to create a duplicate person. A new breathing thinking human being. Instead, I call it tissue regeneration/reconstruction.

However if it has a functional brain - I don't care of they're a vegetable - they deserve rights. We cannot properly discern what a soul requires, so we shouldn't try. If there's a brain, it is assumed they have a soul and therefor deserve rights.

I am against human cloning. There's no purpose as Jon very well pointed out. But I am for organ cloning.

Silent... I do see the point. Basically, to what point do you draw the line and it becomes immoral or unlawful? At the finger or the neck?

I guess my way of thinking is if someone said you need a transplant and you have less than a year to live without it, would the thought of getting a person pregnant and then killing the fetus just before birth to harvest an organ the same or because it's on the genetic level causing the brain death different than whatever method they would use on a full term fetus. I certainly agree with the soul comment. But when is the new life actually "human" for the lack of a better word.

Certainly a thing to think about. I am sure that in our lifetime, this issue will become just as contraversal as abortion.

I saw this article on CNN this morning. I think that Boisselier is a loon ball (personal opinion... no offense LOL).

Good discussion I think... ____________________________________

Cloning group to make 'major announcement'Founded by Raelians, who say aliens engineered usFrom Miriam FalcoCNN

HOLLYWOOD, Florida (CNN) --A group thought to be trying to clone a human has scheduled a news conference for Friday to make a "major announcement." The group -- Clonaid -- was founded by a religious movement called the Raelians, the doctrine of which asserts that life on Earth was created by extraterrestrials.

Brigitte Boisselier, the scientific director of Clonaid, is scheduled to make the announcement Friday at 9 a.m. EST. Last week, Boisselier told some news organizations that the birth of a cloned baby girl was imminent.

Boisselier has told CNN in the past that she will not make an announcement until a healthy baby is born. She told a congressional committee last year that she believed she had the knowledge to produce a human clone in the near future.

Clonaid, which calls itself the "first human cloning company," was founded in 1997. Boisselier is a bishop in the Raelian movement."

Claude Vorilhon, who founded the Raelians, told CNN in July 2001 that the long-term goal for human cloning is to live forever. Vorilhon says cloning a baby is only the first step: Eventually the group wants to learn how to clone an adult, then "transfer the brain to the clone."

Boisselier says the immediate purpose for cloning is to help infertile couples. Last November, she told CNN she was "indeed doing human cloned embryos and we have many cell divisions," but she wouldn't confirm any pregnancies.

No data releasedTo make a clone, scientists first take an egg and remove all of its genetic material. Then the nucleus of a cell -- any cell in the body -- is taken from the individual to be cloned and inserted into the hollowed-out egg.

The cell is then given a jolt of electricity or put in a chemical bath to activate cell division -- essentially tricking the cell into doing what a fertilized egg would normally do. Then the embryo is implanted into a woman's uterus to be carried to term.

It is unknown which exact procedure Clonaid is using, because it has not published or released any data about its research.

Boisselier has not revealed the location of her current lab, only to say it is no longer in the United States. She used to have a lab in West Virginia, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration visited the lab and shut it down.

Scientists so far have successfully cloned sheep, cows, goats, mice, pigs and a rare wild ox. But human cloning is controversial, because the experience with animal cloning has shown a lot of potential for things to go wrong.

'One shouldn't do this'Many animal cloners -- including Ian Wilmut, the Scottish researcher who successfully cloned the first animal, Dolly the sheep, in 1997 -- disapprove of human cloning. Wilmut has said it took 276 failed attempts before Dolly was successfully cloned.

"It is not responsible at this stage to even consider the cloning of humans, " said Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biological Research, which clones mice.

Janeisch said that even if a human clone appears healthy, it may not be once it gets older. Cloning a human at this point, he said, without knowing more about why things go wrong, is "essentially using humans as guinea pigs, and one shouldn't do this."

According to Dr. Jon Hill, a veterinarian who successfully cloned cows at Texas A&M University, even clones who appear normal at birth often develop problems afterward.

"Their livers, their lungs, their heart, their blood vessels are often abnormal after birth," Hill said.

Few legal prohibitionsThe Raelians are not the only group claiming to actively try to clone a human.

Italian doctor Severino Antinori made several announcements in recent months, claiming that a woman was carrying a human clone that would be born in January 2003. And former University of Kentucky professor Panos Zavos has also announced plans to clone a human, but he told CNN earlier this year he had not successfully created an embryo yet.

Scientists and bioethicists have questioned whether any of these groups have the ability to clone a human. Art Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, has said in the past that "we don't know how" to accomplish human cloning.

Legally, there's very little to stop scientists from cloning. In January, the National Academy of Sciences recommended a ban on human cloning, but only four states -- California, Michigan, Louisiana and Rhode Island -- ban any type of cloning research.

The FDA claims it has jurisdiction over human cloning based on the Public Health Service and Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. It says it would regulate the cloning process like a drug.

My opinion, is that no matter what we do or think, human clones will be made, either by the goverment or either by private research companies that receive fundings from rich people who think that by cloning and by using this technology, in the end they will be able to live longer.

I see human cloning as the ultimate doom of our race. They will be a new race. The first ones will probably be just like ordinary humans, but then enhanced clones will eventualy be made, that will have certain functions and perform better than the human race in any given situation. It is the human nature to explore and to see what can they get by combining the latest technologies.

We have laws that ban cloning humans, but we don't have any laws regarding how would a 'clone' be treated like. What will they learn ? What are we going to teach them ? The real danger is that no one will spend time teaching a clone morality, apreciating beauty, understanding love or other things. No one will spend time teaching it all that we are thought when we are little kids. Without this things, they will have no morality, they will have no feelings.

Unlike a computer, that can't actually learn by itself, a human clone will be able to do this, to get smarter all by herslef, and learn what they want. Just think what will happen when you enhance a clone with the speed and the storage space provided by the computers.

In the end in our own ignorance, we will create something without any feelings, with access to the latest technologies, with the power to learn, develop, create other clones, and way better than any other human. And in the end our own ignorance will destroy us.

I think that guy is probably lying. If he isn't though - If i were the kid that was born from it, i would be really fucking pissed and I think I would end up murdering alot of people out of rage and because I wouldn't have much value for life since I was "made" and not concieved.

I think a clone should be considered a real person. I am not sure about religion, but I think a clone would have a soul, a separate soul than the one it was copied from. Any human, designed or not, should be considered human and to have a soul.

I think it should be legal to grow single organs only, a new perfect heart or lung. The brain is a tough one.

I have heard it is safer to modify human dna and make clones and things because we are more familiar with human dna and our bodies than any other animal. I don't know if this is true.

I am against this. I am completely against "creating" a person or any animal really unnaturally. If you could give the person a choice to be born that way, then maybe it would be ok. But you can't.

Issues like this aren't definate, you can have a black and white but in the middle there is way to much gray to deal with. I am also against abortion. Even if i'm not sure about the existence of God, I think playing God is wrong.